Monsoon Skies
by jayfeather86
Summary: "He had grey eyes, almost silver, like the color of the mist that hangs in the air after a storm, and just as deep." [Vietnam war AU. Zoro/Law.]


Hannah Alt

_Monsoon Skies_

It took me three weeks to decide that I hated Vietnam. Vietnam and its fucking jungle. The place was like hell. Shit, who am I kidding? The place was hell, for me and every other guy unlucky enough to be in this war. It was the shittiest goddamn place you could imagine, and we were out in the middle of fucking nowhere, with nobody but us and the VC and a whole lot of bloodsucking bugs.

They knew the place a hell of a lot better than we did; that was for sure. Every tree, bush, and log looked the same to me each day we humped through the same shitty jungle, or at least that's how it felt. Even though I was only 22 at the time and hadn't seen much of the world outside of where I was from, not to mention I got lost pretty easy, everything in that damn jungle looked the same. It was like we were going in one big circle. One big fucking circle of hell.

How many circles of hell are there? Nine? And they say it's always hot there, too. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Vietnam was one of them. Probably one of the worse ones, too, if you take my word for it. Or any of the guys who were out there. There were two kinds of weather in Vietnam: either hot as hell and so humid you could probably drown in it if you weren't careful, or a fucking monsoon. Both of them sucked. It didn't matter which it was; every day I woke up with my shirt stuck to my skin and my hair slicked to my skull with sweat underneath my helmet. Everybody did, and it only got worse as the day went on.

The guys in my platoon were pretty decent, although some of them were crazy fuckers. You had guys like Marshall Teach, who was like a fucking bear with a machine gun. Huge, stupid, and with a temper like a grenade fuse. I wouldn't trust that bastard with a gun if I didn't have one myself that I could blow his goddamn brains out with if he got too wild. Then there was another guy who swore his name was Don Quixote, though everybody called him the Flamingo because he carried this necklace of pink feathers and bird claws around with him. Creepy shit, if you ask me. And I'm pretty sure he was doing something with voodoo or some shit at night; I could hear him laughing to himself in his foxhole like some fucking lunatic. Guess I can't really blame him, though. The jungle does things to you after a while, and he'd been there too long.

But there were people like Chopper, too. The kid was barely out of high school, nineteen and nervous as hell about everything, but he was a damn good medic when the time came. I think his real name was Tony, but everyone called him Chopper because of the way his front teeth stuck out. Small guy, maybe five-foot-two and skinny as a rail, but he was a good kid. He looked probably sixteen or seventeen when he came down with us, and I could barely believe he was old enough to be drafted.

Fucking draft… That's how I ended up there. Most of us did, and we were pissed about it. Everybody bitched about being drafted sometime or another; it was just a natural thing that happened out there. What else was there to talk about? All the guys you shot that day, or how you threw that grenade and it blew the head off the VC commander? I don't think so.

Well, scratch that. There was one guy who hardly ever said a word. It kind of pissed me off, honestly, because he was always fucking smiling, too. Not grinning like a lunatic or anything, but just this little smirk that made you think there was something he knew that nobody else did. Like a fucking joke or something, though the look in his eyes made me doubt that it was anything like that. I never knew his name, but his dog tags said Trafalgar, so that's what I called him.

He had darker colored tan skin and really black hair, like he was Mexican or maybe Pacific Islander, except he didn't look like it in his face. But it was his eyes that really got to me. He had grey eyes, almost silver, like the color of the mist that hangs in the air after a storm, and just as deep. It creeped me the fuck out at first, just because when he looked at you, it was like he was looking into you.

I remember him in particular because of something he did one day. It was after a firefight, when all the rounds had been fired and the smoke in the air was slowly clearing. I was still breathing heavy as I crawled from my spot behind a tree, M16 still clutched in both hands. My heart had yet to stop pounding from the intensity of the carnage, adrenaline still rushing in my veins. I twitched at every little sound and my heart jumped, even if it was just a twig snapping or someone reloading a cartridge.

I stood up cautiously, doing a last skim with my eyes over the battlefield to check for movement or any VC that might still be twitching. It hadn't been a terribly hard fight, as Vietnamese ambushes go, since we'd been prepared and the Flamingo had detonated the Claymores as soon as he saw them coming. Still laughing the whole time, but that was his problem, not mine.

Dead leaves and twigs crunched under my boots as I did a slow walkaround of our side of the battlefield, glancing around to make sure all our men were here and no one was wounded. It didn't seem like anyone was hurt too badly, since Chopper wasn't frantic and motormouthing like he always did to keep himself calm whenever he was treating the wounded. That was a good sign. We must have gotten lucky.

Stepping over a dead Vietnamese with a bullet hole in his forehead, I happened to see one of ours walking around the field, wandering in between the bodies with his gun held loosely in one hand, prodding the faces of the dead men with the barrel and watching them limply shift in the dirt and leaves. Eyes narrowing, I made my way towards him, intending to tell him to stop fucking around and get back so we can regroup, but that was before I recognized him.

He looked up at me as I came nearer with those eyes like monsoon skies and smiled, mirthless. Usually I could get a pretty good idea of what a guy was thinking by looking at their eyes, but not with him. His were like looking at a book written in another language, or trying to see through a mirror.

"What the hell are you doing, Trafalgar?" I asked finally, shifting my focus away from his eyes and opting to stare at the brim of his helmet instead.

He chuckled softly, like I'd said something funny. "Nothing," he replied, looking at me with that little smirk that made me want to know just what the hell he was thinking.

I rolled my eyes. That didn't help me at all. "Then stop doing nothing and get your ass over here," I snapped irritably, annoyed at him for being so damn vague, as I turned to leave.

The feeling of his eyes on my back made me stop of a sudden, and I turned back to ask what the hell his problem was, but I didn't get the chance.

He was still smiling that knowing little smile, eyes the color of stormclouds staring directly into mine and rendering me speechless. "The weak don't get to choose how they die."

I blinked, not really understanding the phrase at first. I thought it was an odd thing to say, especially out of nowhere like that, and I was so caught up in trying to make sense of his words that I almost didn't notice when Trafalgar walked right past me, chuckling and patting me on the back with the hand that wasn't holding his M16.

That snapped me out of my reverie, and I jolted back to awareness, shaking my head to clear it as I jogged to catch up with him. Crazy bastard, I thought to myself, rolling my eyes and vowing to dismiss his statement as a lunatic's ramblings. Trafalgar was also our second medic and a skilled surgeon; I'd seen him remove a bullet from between a man's ribs before, and the guy lived. Well, until he stepped on a Claymore and blew himself to bits, but that's another story. But even with how good he was at being a field doctor, Trafalgar still probably had a screw loose or something. Not anything like Don the Flamingo, but definitely a little crazy.

_Crazy bastard,_ I mentally repeated to myself, shaking my head and trying to forget those words.

It wasn't until almost two months later that something else happened. Something big. I remember it because it was another circle of hell for me. Most of what happened in that war is fuzzy for me, like it could have been a dream if I had tried hard enough to make myself believe it. Ha. I wish. But it was real. It was all way too goddamn real, the day we found those fucking tunnels...

"Chopper, get your ass over here." Sergeant Coby Rogers called the order back to the platoon, glancing back at all of us for only a second before returning his attention to the dark pit that seemed endless in the ground before him. His appearance was deceiving; he looked really young, with light strawberry blond hair and a smooth face that made you think he was only a teenager, but the guy was twenty-five and a fairly experienced leader, with a hard-assed attitude you wouldn't expect from someone like him. He had a funny X-shaped scar above his right eyebrow, but nobody was either dumb or curious enough to ask about it. Coby Rogers didn't take any shit, especially when it came to SOP.

Chopper quickly trotted up to the front to report for duty, having to crane his neck to look up at Coby because he was so short and tilting his helmet back to see. "Sir?"

Coby glanced from Chopper to the tunnel. "I need you to go in there and scope it out," he said in a tone that brooked no argument, gesturing with the barrel of his M16 towards the pit of blackness in front of them. "Take your flashlight and a pistol and be back in ten."

The poor kid looked terrified just at the sight of the dark tunnel and swallowed hard, though he looked at Coby with a determined expression on his young face. "Yes, sir!"

He was fishing in his pack for a flashlight when I decided this wasn't a good idea. I had never liked these goddamn tunnels to begin with, and I had a bad feeling about this, anyway. It was an unwritten law that you didn't question Coby's orders, but if it meant that Chopper wouldn't get his ass killed down there, then I didn't give a shit.

"Rogers, he's a medic," I pointed out, glancing from Chopper's nervous face to Coby's determined, impassive one. "And a damn good one. Maybe we should send somebody else."

Coby looked at me with steely green eyes, his eyebrows knitting slightly. "He's the only who can fit in those tunnels," he returned, his voice level. "And you know we have to clear 'em out." It was true. The VC would pop out of nowhere and be gone just as quickly in an ambush if we didn't take care of these tunnels. But that didn't mean I was gonna let Chopper go in there blind like that.

"Then I'll do it," I said, looking Coby in the eyes. "I'll make it work." I was a pretty big guy, and my shoulders were broad, but I wasn't so big that I couldn't fit inside. It would be a squeeze, but I'd find a way.

Coby sighed through his nose and rubbed his temple with his free hand, shaking his head after a moment. "Alright," he said finally, jerking his head towards the tunnel. "Get in there. Just don't go and get yourself lost like you do out here."

I held back a sarcastic retort and settled for rolling my eyes as I started to head into the tunnel behind Chopper, but another voice from directly behind me made me almost jump.

"I'll back him up." Trafalgar's voice, low and smooth, was practically in my ear since he was so close and we were almost into the tunnel, and I was surprised. What was he doing? Did he have a death wish? It was unusual for such a big group to go into a small tunnel like this one, especially since we didn't know where it went or who might be inside.

Coby just looked at him for a moment with that steely, determined gaze before giving a small nod, and we took that as permission to go.

Inside the tunnels it was dark, and our flashlights provided only bleak amounts of weak yellow light, illuminating the dust in the air and the rough walls that seemed way too close as they scraped against my shoulders, cool and solid. The air was stale and stagnant, and every noise we made seemed muffled by the walls and amplified at the same time. Taking away the background noise of the jungle, with its rustling plants and screeching birds and buzzing insects, left the world underground feeling eerily silent. Our breathing seemed loud, our footsteps like a stampede of bull elephants parading through.

It was making me really damn claustrophobic, though I tried to keep my breathing slow and even and focus on following Chopper's diminutive form in front of me, illuminated by the yellow luminescence of my flashlight beam. Trafalgar was right behind me, and I could feel his eyes on me every few seconds as we walked deeper into the tunnel, the ground sloping downwards into the earth for I don't know how long before it leveled out, leaving us in a cool, if stuffy, underground tunnel that led simply into more darkness.

Even the flashlights couldn't penetrate the inky blackness more than a few feet in front of us, and it was like staring into the depths of utter nothing. Kinda like I always pictured space to be like, except it was utterly devoid of any stars or planets or things to light your way. Just one big black hole, as if it had swallowed up all the light in the little universe of the tunnel and was hungry for more.

I remember letting out a dry, hoarse laugh for some reason, though it came out as more of a breathy wheeze, and the grin on my face must have disturbed Chopper, because the kid looked terrified when he glanced back at me for a second. I almost wanted to say something, but that would have been the dumbest fucking thing to do when you're trying to stay hidden, and Chopper was already starting forward again, anyway.

I tried not to notice the walls getting tighter around me, the rough packed earth scraping almost painfully against my shoulders and elbows as I shuffled through, following Chopper's lead and hardly noticing his nervous jumps at every little sound we made. My breathing seemed loud even to my own ears, and I tried to quiet it, though it was hard because I was tired and thirsty from the heat of the jungle and the stress of this whole thing was fraying my nerves.

What happened next was kind of a blur.

I don't remember seeing the trip wire, but I thought I saw something glint in the yellow gaze of Chopper's flashlight, just before the whole world seemed to throw itself into a frenzy around me. The noise of the explosion was deafening, sounds bouncing off the quickly crumbling walls of the tunnel and disorienting me, my ears ringing as chunks of stone and dirt from the ceiling rained down upon us.

I heard Chopper scream somewhere in there, and my first instinct was to get to him. Yeah, I know, I was an idiot for not thinking of getting the hell out of there, but for Christ's sake, he was just a kid! Nineteen, and he had a future ahead of him. A fuckin' doctor at nineteen, can you believe it? I could; I'd seen him. And I knew I couldn't let the kid die.

More explosions were going off all through the tunnels ahead of us, but I wasn't focusing on that. Blindly I fought my way through the dirt and rocks pelting me from above and pushed towards Chopper's panicking voice. I was pretty sure he had some kind of nervous disorder thing going on, and I thought that would have kept him out of being drafted. But what the hell do I know? He was drafted anyway, and so was I.

But he wasn't going to die here.

I thought I was almost to him when I felt a hard shove push me backwards, someone's hands on my chest and a formidable amount of strength behind them. Taken by surprise, I had no choice but to stumble backwards, and I was surprised when I almost fell on my ass into a more stable part of the tunnel. It wasn't collapsing yet, but the cracking and rumbling sounds coming from above didn't sound too promising.

After a few moments of shock, I remembered myself and tried to shove back into the collapsing tunnel, not caring that it was quickly filling with dirt and rubble. I was fully prepared to die going back in there, as long as I could save my friend, who didn't deserve to die like that. Dead is a state of mind, really. And even though I was so close to it, walking the edge of that skyscraper with my toes hanging over, I had never felt so alive.

I could almost feel the adrenaline rushing through my veins like fire, electrifying my nerves and making me see everything as if it was in high definition, every detail mesmerizingly enhanced to make it an almost surreal experience. Darkness had never seemed so dizzyingly, infinitely black, and light had never shone so brilliant and luminous. Colors, the earthen and metal tones of my surroundings, were practically bursting with saturated detail like an overripe fruit, oozing a river of its shimmering juices like glowing lifeblood.

After only a few seconds I was met with a hard obstruction, though I could feel the heat from the human body like the glow of life itself. Hands gripped my shoulders in an almost desperate hold, fingers digging into my skin and the fabric of my filthy shirt and yanking us close together, with what I later discerned as Chopper's unconscious body pressed between us.

A startlingly familiar set of grey eyes gazed into mine with such intensity that I was stunned for a moment, the noise of the falling rocks and faint explosions around us seeming to fade into the background. Trafalgar's jet-black hair had gotten shaggy in the eight months he'd been here, and it hung almost in his eyes as he looked at me, and I looked back at him, his tan facial features absurdly calm.

I didn't know how to react when he smiled that infuriating little smile he always had, like he knew something I didn't, and I almost wanted to yell and ask what the hell it was that made him smile like that. But I didn't. I just stared at him for what seemed like an eternity, like I could drown in those damn eyes of his, grey and cold and laughing. The words he spoke to me were ones I recognized, spoken almost in a whisper that seemed deafening.

"The weak don't get to choose how they die."

With that, he shoved Chopper against me and pushed us both out of the way and into the connecting tunnel, just as the whole ceiling came down with a deep, massive crash that made the ground shake. I was shocked for half a second, catching a final glimpse of that little smirk on his face just before the tunnel collapsed on top of him, cutting off my view with a wall of crumbling blackness.

I barely even remember getting out of there, turning on a dime and running blindly with Chopper's body held against my chest, relying on my instincts to lead me out of those damn tunnels and back to the surface, where there was air and light and things I didn't really care about at that moment.

It was like I'd had an epiphany when Trafalgar had shoved me out of that tunnel as it collapsed and said those words to me again. I finally understood. When he'd said it to me that day we'd had that skirmish with the VC, I didn't really get it, with him and that little smirk he had on as he went around prodding at the bodies of the dead Vietnamese soldiers.

But I knew at that moment, and I know I was smiling when the rest of the platoon pulled me and Chopper out of that hole. I wasn't really paying attention to them, and their voices seemed distant and muted to me, content for those few moments to be held in the fog of my thoughts, my newfound knowledge and irony.

He was right, the smug asshole. I just shook my head and smiled. _Crazy bastard._


End file.
